Extreme Cold Era: Shelter Don't Keep Waste-Chapter 876 - 105: Dissecting the Wyvern

In the laboratory, a complete flying dragon's corpse lay sprawled across the cold dissecting table.

Dark green scales covered its body, the frosted surface glimmering under the lights—a low-temperature environment deliberately maintained by Perfikot to delay the corpse's decay.

The flying dragon stretched five meters in length, reaching twelve meters if counting the snake-like tail, and had a wingspan of nearly ten meters, qualifying it as a giant creature.

Yet, compared to the giant dragon in Perfikot's memory, it still appeared diminutive.

That giant dragon was over twenty meters long, with a wingspan enough to cover half a valley, whereas this flying dragon corpse was merely a low-quality replica.

Perfikot's gaze swept over the flying dragon's streamlined body, finally resting on its folded wings.

To the average person, the flight structure of a flying dragon is simply "a pair of wings," but in her view, every inch of this body bore marks of rebellion against nature.

The scalpel precisely cut open the wing membrane, revealing the semi-transparent skin and bones underneath.

The flying dragon's wing bones were supported by three slender main bones, with bat-like finger structures branching at the ends, but the material was entirely different—hollow bones internally not resembling the lightweight honeycomb structure of birds, but densely packed with insect-like layered fibers.

Under a microscope, these fibers displayed spiral patterns, akin to artificially woven metallic mesh, which reduced weight while offering impressive compressive strength.

"There's no chance structures like this evolved naturally." Perfikot murmured to herself.

Birds' bones are light and strong, with an internal honeycomb structure that reduces weight while maintaining strength.

Bats' wing bones are thin and flexible, relying on the membrane's elasticity for gliding.

While the flying dragon's bones were hollow, their internal layered fibers were more like artificial strengthening rather than a result of natural evolution.

Though bats' wing bones are slender, they rely on the elasticity of the membrane for gliding, while the flying dragon's wing membrane embeds scale-like keratin layers, whose tenacity far exceeds the limits of biological tissue.

When she pulled at a piece of wing membrane with tweezers, tiny sparks flew from the torn point—these tissues had clearly been altered by some external force, perhaps even embedded with energy circuits.

Cutting into the chest cavity, Perfikot frowned slightly.

The flying dragon's chest muscles were far less exaggerated compared to a giant dragon—a giant dragon's chest muscles were as thick as city walls, whereas this corpse's muscle mass merely slightly outmatched a war horse.

However, as the tip of the knife sliced the muscle bundles, a more bizarre truth emerged: the flying dragon's muscle fibers were not the spindle-shaped bundles typical of birds, but densely arranged like the feathered muscles of insects.

Countless hair-thin muscle fibers radiated aligned from tendons, appearing as an entangled mass akin to a centipede's multitude of legs.

She picked up a bundle of muscle fibers with tweezers; separated from biological currents, the muscle strands trembled independently for thirty seconds, with a frequency as high as that of a hummingbird flapping its wings.

"The high-frequency characteristic of insect flight muscles, stuffed into a mammalian body framework..." she quickly recorded in the log, "energy consumption would be ten times that of ordinary flying animals, unable to survive beyond three hours by normal reasoning."

Flying is one of the most energy-consuming forms of movement in nature.

Birds' chest muscles (pectoralis major and minor) constitute 15%-25% of body weight, and these muscles drive wing flapping through rapid contractions.

Insects have more unique flight muscles; their high-frequency vibrations rely on an indirect flight muscle system to achieve quick wing beating through elastic deformation of the thorax.

The flying dragon's muscle structure evidently tries to combine the strengths of both but lacks essential physiological support.

The answer lies deep within the fragmented chest cavity of the flying dragon.

Its heart is not a typical bird or mammal four-chamber structure, but a tubular organ formed by a series of six chambers, with blood-pumping efficiency rivaling the open circulatory system of insects.

More bizarre was the dark green gland attached to the spine—these glands continuously secreted fluorescent substances, visible under a microscope as deeply integrated with mitochondria in muscle fibers, increasing the efficiency of converting chemical energy into biological energy by at least five times.

Flying entails extremely high energy consumption.

A hummingbird's metabolic rate exceeds that of mammals by over ten times, and the flying dragon's metabolic system evidently attempts to compensate for this shortcoming by transforming glandular and heart structures.

However, such forcibly grafted metabolic engines clearly cannot sustain long-term maintenance.

"Forcibly grafted metabolic engines." Perfikot sneered.

The residues in the flying dragon's gastric pouch showed they consumed high-energy mineral crystals, which decomposed in the glands into silver-blue fuel, supporting the energy needed for flight and serving as ammunition for its fire-breathing organs.

When she cut open the fire-breathing ducts and the liquid remnants met the air, they exploded instantly on the dissecting table, causing a burst of bluish-white flames.

Perfikot stepped back half a step, letting the flames extinguish naturally after burning for some time.

In nature, fire-breathing is a rare biological characteristic, one could say it's absolutely impossible for fire-breathing creatures to evolve in the original world.

Some insects (like the bombardier beetle) can produce high-temperature gas through chemical reactions, but the scale is far less than the fire-breathing capability of a flying dragon.

The flying dragon's fire-breathing organs clearly rely on some external energy sources (like high-energy mineral crystals), further proving its unnatural origin.

A giant dragon may be fantastical, but its muscle, bone, and fire-breathing organ still align with biological logic—the robust chest muscles match flight needs, and fire-breathing essentially involves efficient methane gland combustion.

Whereas this flying dragon, it crudely merges a bat's skeleton, insect's muscle, and some modified energy system, resembling a malformed doll pieced together by a child using scraps.

"Natural evolution? Ha." She wiped the scalpel clean, cold sarcasm flickering in her eyes.

If a giant dragon can be compared to a dazzling crystal birthed from evolution's river, then this flying dragon is a puppet forcibly pieced together by some external force.

Each organ screaming "impossible," yet functioning due to some power.

If this were a product of natural evolution, then Perfikot might as well tear up and eat the pages on biological evolution theory.

If nature could evolve such an absurd creature, there would be only one possibility: this world was designed by a half-baked programmer with a sick mind, using a bunch of BUGs putting together a runnable program would yield such absurd results.

No normal world would produce anything so ridiculous; it can only be artificial, or 'divinely created.'

Perfikot is inclined to think this is a creation by some divine entity, say, the second-generation God of Intelligence, only someone closely related to alchemy could possibly create such a thing.

The laboratory door quietly opens, a cold wind carrying the scent of snow sweeps in.

Perfikot looks at the outline of the floating city outside the window, her fingertips unconsciously rubbing the hilt of the knife.

These "design flaws" of the flying dragons may actually be some challenge—and she will use more precision alchemy to completely analyze this warped creation.